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Shri Mahavir Jain Aradhana Kendra
www.kobatirth.org
Acharya Shri Kailashsagarsuri Gyanmandir
60
Atman and Moksa
He, there is no thinker. Other than He there is no understander. He is your Soul, the inner controller, the Immortal.” 1
The knowledge of the Ātman in its own unqualified, unconditioned, unmodified and pure form is the real knowledge; and whenever the Self is thought of as something different from its pure unqualified form, is called ignorance or avidyā. When one sees the ultimate unity of the Ātman, it is said, he knows the Self quite properly; but instead of that, when one sees the plurality as real, he is under the spell of ignorance. Ignorance thus consists in knowing the Ātman in a distorted fashion, in seeing him as something which it is not (as anâtman). The removal of such misconceptions i.e., the Self being something other than itself, is called the higher knowledge. The Mundaka Upanişad recognises two kinds of knowledge (dvè vidyè) as the 'Higher one' (Parāvidyā – Rifat and the Aparā-vidyā – ep9e1faut) the former dealing with transcendental Self--and the latter, the other branches of knowledge. It is already made clear that the Higher Self or the Transcendental Self, which is the real Self of the individual, cannot be known as other finite and material things of the nature can be known with sense perception and reflection. The Ātman or the Higher Self escapes every conception that we can form of it. It evades all description and, therefore, we have to know it in some different way. Out of ignorance the finite
1 BỊh. Up. 3.7.23. Mundaka Up. 1.1.5.
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